Friday, March 1, 2013

Maybe Calvinism is right but just way off on its timing?

The vacation in the Dominican Republic was incredibly relaxing.  The house Mr. Clifford and Mr. Surret found was really amazing.  Great pool, amazing views and huge. 

I went horse riding for the first time ever while there.  On the beach.  I also learned the hard way why one must sit forward in the saddle or you will get saddle sores/abrasions/brush burns on parts of your ass and they hurt...

I, Mr. Clifford and two other of the trip participants went waterfall jumping too.  There is a series of twenty seven water falls in the DR that tourists can go jump down.  The four of us decided to do all twenty seven (you can opt for just seven or twelve also).  Our guide did not speak English, I mentioned I spoke uno poquito of Spanish and that gave him license to speak Spanish the entire time.  The guide was surprised that that we completed all twenty seven in just over two hours and I caught the phrases "no gordo" "fuerte" and "jovenes" and told the rest we just got called young, handsome, strong young men....

The boys are now all about working out.  It is really driven by the oldest son as he is of an age where physical appearance is starting to matter.  So we joined the local YMCA.  I have completely reworked my workout schedule so that I now take the boys to the Y on Saturdays and Sundays.  My oldest is all about lifting, the youngest not so much.  So generally I and son #1 lift for the first thirty to forty minutes then hit the cardio.  Son #2 does cardio the entire time because with gay dads there is no such thing as too much cardio.

Speaking of lifting, son #1 is all hot and bothered to start doing leg workouts.  I told him fine, that means you will be learning how to do squats correctly and safely- squats really, really are the best leg (and overall) lifting to do.  But we will not be doing those as son#1 is having some issues with one of his knees.

We saw Mama.  It really isn't a horror movie, it is a fairy tale.  A fairy tale in the traditional, Brothers Grimm sense, i.e. there is not a happy ending for all involved.  It was a pretty good flick, we all  liked it.  Hansel & Gretel:  Witch Hunters was actually very entertaining and not a bad late Saturday night movie to see with the boys.  We also watched Silent Hill:  Revelation on On Demand and while it was visually cool it was complete crap.  The plot was incoherent and very disjointed.  This weekend we have the boys and will be seeing the oxymoronic titled The Last Exorcism:  Part II.

I think it was JW who had me read an article about what we can learn about where the global economy is headed by comparing and contrasting two epic, classic sci-fi icons:  Star Trek and Star Wars.  Star Trek was noted for the fact that due to the invention of replicators, the need for money disappeared.  So humanity was able to pursue a more noble goal.  Star Wars was the mercantilist, chaotic one that had various groups vying for control of resources and political power.  I say this as I read about BitCoin and it makes me think we are definitely headed the Star Wars route with the whole idea of credits being the monetary unit of the future.  I hope we also get light sabers and droids.  Not so much looking forward to Stormtroopers...

Speaking of replicators, I am kinda stuck on how they would really work.  If e=mc² and there is a finite amount of mass in the universe, at some point wouldn't replicator use start eating up mass somewhere in the universe and slowly cause the destruction?  I am not a quantum/theoretical physicist by any means and maybe I am being overly simplistic but I was just wondering out loud.

Sticking with the physics line, apparently quantum physics somehow predicted the mass of the Higgs boson.  No big deal right  Not so fast.  It seems by possible correctly predicting the mass, it heralds the end of the universe because it means it is possible for an alternate universe to start growing within our own and destroying us in the process.  Granted, the process is something like another tens of billions of yearsbut the mass of the Higgs boson predetermines it all if the calculations are correct  Still it go my geeky, sci-fi, fantasy, comic book influenced mind thinking how it is kinda like melding together BSG, Babylon 5, Galactus and Lord of Light.  It could probably make a great pentad of books.  The universe ten billion years from now, slowly being eaten away at/usurped/destroyed by the alt universe bubbling up from within it, humans are something akin to Vorlons.  Several are debating what to do, one says it is the way the universe works we let  it, another opposes him and wants to break the cycle, they and hundreds of others survive and witness the big bang of the old one caused by the new alternate universe.  The ones who wanted to let it happen decide to guide the new one, the ones against want to destroy it and use some kind of quantum flux thing-a-migig to go back to how it was.  Sadly I do not have the time, skill or imagination to write such a series...

1 comment:

Tim said...

wow sounds like a great vacation trip! glad to see you posting again, thanks for the movie reviews.

Loved your reference to the Vorlons..

Not sure if i can infer the correct posit of your replicator theory. But wouldn't replicators just move electrons around? Unless they were stripping energy or mass from one set point it would seem unlikely that it could cause a disturbance. I think the more interesting question would be if they could create so many heavy metals that they could disrupt gravity wells or transmit iron into a sun..